


How To Find The Fractals

by gala_apples



Series: Shameless First Impressions [3]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Disclosing, Gen, Panic Attacks, Past Abuse, Rape Aftermath, Season/Series 03, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24017188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: Lloyd Lishman, drunk and horny, crawls into Lip’s bed. Lip doesn’t yell and push him out.
Series: Shameless First Impressions [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1724326
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	How To Find The Fractals

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'awake here forever' for my Shameless bingo card.
> 
> So I love this show. I love this show a lot. And I get that it's the kind of show that doesn't tell the audience what's morally right or wrong, but assumes they have the brains to figure it out themselves. That said, there are so fucking many instances of sexual assault that get glossed right over (see end notes for details). Watching season three I just needed a story that deals with some of that.
> 
> Lastly, every survivor reacts differently. They react differently at the time, fight/flight/freeze responses. They react differently after, disclosing or not, reporting or not. Every reaction is valid, and everyone's choices for how to manage themselves afterwards are valid too.

Lip doesn’t move for hours afterwards. It takes an hour before he can even pull the blanket up over himself. Only the sudden terror that Liam or Ian might wake up and see him like this gets through the frozen haze.

He’s going to have to burn it, he knows. He can’t let Carl touch this filthy contaminated thing. As the fog begins to leech away, it’s a safe thought for his brain to latch onto. He’ll have to get dressed, sneak into the backyard and douse it in lighter fluid after tossing it into the grill. It’ll be an overwhelming amount of fabric for the tiny grill, he’ll have to watch it carefully so that he doesn’t light up the back yard. Lip spends a lot of the time until dawn crafting the scene in his mind, filling each action with as much of the five senses as he can. The feeling of concrete on his bare feet. The scent of lighter fluid. The smoke building in front of his eyes. It’s a safe place for his mind to live in. He’s not ready to be somewhere else yet.

When it’s light enough Lip can start staring at the stupid posters Carl’s replaced his cool posters with. He really does need to get rid of everything involved with it. Now would be the perfect time to do it, before everyone gets up, but he can’t bring himself to get up. He lays through Liam stirring, and Ian waking up, and Ian picking Liam up and taking him downstairs, time ticking away as his mind spins in its rut. 

This time it’s the thought that Fiona might come upstairs to get his ass out of bed for breakfast that scares Lip into hopping out of the top bunk. It’s not as painful as he was worried it might be. Good. That way he doesn’t have to make up an excuse for limping now, when he wasn’t at bedtime last night. His boxers are tangled in the blankets. He takes off his wifebeater and adds it to the pile. When everyone’s gone he’ll shove it all into a laundry basket and take it outside to dispose of. 

Lip pulls on boxers, then jeans, a long sleeved shirt and a hoodie. Technically it’s a sweltering summer morning but Lip isn’t feeling his body too much. It’d be a clue to the family that he’s off, not right, except who’d ever guess this? 

After the fire the next task will be making sure everyone else is safe. He’s not sure if he was some sleazebag Frank let in, or if the house got broken into. If it’s the second he’s going to make sure this place isn’t worth it as a repeat target. This isn’t happening to anyone else. 

Lip sprints down the stairs. He doesn’t want to get caught in the hallway by Mandy. If she touches him the way she usually does, he might zone out again. After Blake Collins Lip couldn’t get it up for Mandy for days. He’d tried to make up for it in oral, but once Mandy had figured it out she’d been disgusted by him and didn’t touch him for a week. He doesn’t need that drama again. At least this guy didn’t shave him, or disfigure him, or kill him. The family can’t survive without him, not with Fiona making shitty financial decisions the way she has been.

It’s another Jimmy hosted domestic breakfast happening in the kitchen. The room is crowded with close to a dozen people. Kevin is squirting half a bottle of ketchup on his plate of eggs. Molly is already making a friend in Debbie, both of them spreading jam on toast and talking. Mandy is half dressed, like usual, but Lip thinks he can avoid her pretty easily if he starts helping Liam eat. He’ll make it through breakfast, and do what he has to do -fuck, third task, he’ll need to go to the Free Clinic to get a STI check before he has sex with Mandy again- and he’ll reward himself for getting through it all with a bottle of vodka.

“Hey, Lip!” 

And then he gets close enough to smell him.

The man, _that man_ , is at his kitchen table. He’s as tall and big as he felt last night. He’s got grey hair, and he’s white, and old. Not what Lip imagined. But there’s no questioning that scent; overpriced cologne soaked in a night of drinking whiskey.

“This is LLoyd, my dad. He’s- Lip?”

The Gallaghers are no stranger to random puking, thanks Frank and Monica. Lip’s not the normal athlete for that play -he holds his liquor well and doesn’t mix it with any hard drug that might induce vomiting- but it’s not completely unusual either. Everyone’s got nights they do just a little too much. When Lip bolts the three steps to the half-bath and sprays puke into the toilet, everyone’s watching, but no one’s overly concerned.

“You and Mandy sneak out? Drink in the park?” Fiona questions.

Lip scrapes together every last thing he has, every iota of pulling yourself together nearly two decades of being Frank and Monica’s child has instilled in him, and manages to get the bathroom door closed and locked before he’s collapsing to the linoleum. He loses some time then. He focuses in on the carved wood frame holding the circular mirror, traces the lines with his eyes. It’s close to being a fractal pattern. There’s something poetic in fractals being messes that happen again and again and again. 

Debbie knocks to ask if he’s got the runs, does he need more t.p., she’ll get him some. It’s a jolt from safety but Lip manages to reply, says what he needs to to get her to leave without face to face contact. He’s present again, as much as he doesn’t want to be, and that means faced with his newest problem. How does he leave the bathroom. Fuck, how does he leave the bathroom when _he’s_ right there at the table, like he can just breathe the same air and it’s okay. Lip didn’t think this through. He should have bolted for outside. Puking on the lawn would have been no more of a spectacle and he could be halfway to Canada by now.

It’s pathetic. Lip is being pathetic and he knows it and he can’t stop. He’s pathetic and a hypocrite because he tried to make a big stink about female pedophiles and then he let her rape him and it was no big deal, he even took a trick home, but now that it’s a man he wants to die? According to past him’s reaction, he should just be happy for the lessons on proper anal, right? It either matters or it doesn’t, and if he can think about Blake Collins without throwing up -never mind that the one time since then that he’s taken a bite of a peanut butter sandwich he had to chug an entire tallboy of beer to get that fucking taste out of his mouth before he hurled- than Jimmy’s dad shouldn’t be causing this either.

The sound on the other side of the door slowly drops as everyone begins their day. Ian goes first, no surprise, during the summers he works every day for the squirrel fund. Then Molly and Mandy, probably to pick something up from the Milkovich house while Dad is still passed out from the heroin and coke. Fiona has work, Jimmy and his dad have somewhere to be. At some point Ve drops in to collect Keven, five minutes later they’re gone too. Once Lip can hear the screaming of all the babysitting kids, he takes his chance to get upstairs unwatched. Deb’s got all the kids watching tv as he burns the duvet and the sheet and last night’s nightwear. There’s no blood in his underwear so there’s no other physical proof to get rid of. Then he showers until the water tank is cold. Not a hard feat mind you, probably a few of the live ins have had showers this morning already. It’s hard to smell anything except woodsy spice and whiskey, but he holds the soap to his nose and tries.

Lip can’t stay here. He can’t be around a bunch of innocent giggling children right now. And he sure the fuck can’t go back to his bedroom and hide. He scoops up his keys and leaves, waving his goodbye at Deb so she doesn’t try to talk to him. He spends most of the day walking around smoking cigarettes. A chunk of time at Planned Parenthood, debasing himself explaining how fucking poor he is so he can get a low cost test panel. More time zoning out, like when he’s bumped from behind on the sidewalk and has to take a bit to watch the pattern in the chain link fence until his head is empty again. 

Eventually he winds up at the Kash and Grab. Lip’s gotta be normal by the next family meal, or at least normal enough to pass. His brothers and sisters are usually pretty shrewd when it comes to noticing off behaviour. A lifetime of hypervigilance towards Monica and Frank’s crazy will do that to you, never mind all the other fantastic role models in their lives who need to be subtly manipulated and micromanaged for Gallagher safety. It’ll be easier if he can try out his mask one at a time, make sure it’s set on tight before he does something stupid to fuck it up like not getting an erection with Mandy, or whine to Fiona that Mrs Neidermeyer came on to him while wearing lingerie like it was a bad thing not an experience any fourteen year old would be lucky to have.

Lip’s out of luck in that there are no customers in the store, and he has his bored brother’s full attention. Still, it’s better than everyone at the same time, playing off each other and helping each other pick holes in the facade.

“Feeling better? No more puke?”

“You’ll be the first to know,” he answers.

“Whatever. You’re lucky you missed it. That was the most awkward breakfast I’ve ever had. Top five, at least. Sitting in the kitchen right after Monica tried to off herself ranks up there too. But man...”

“Why’s that,” Lip forces himself to ask. Normal him would, he knows.

“Well, you know Jimmy’s dad? I think I’m the reason for his divorce. I’ve been kind of fuck buddies with him. I bet she found out and-”

Lip doesn’t know he’s doing it until it’s already done. He’s swinging, punching Ian in the face so hard he topples into the produce display. A few apples tumble out of their crate and onto the floor.

“Ow! What the fuck, Lip? It’s not like Jimmy’s gonna break up with Fiona over it. He doesn’t even know yet. Ned, er, Lloyd I guess... Lloyd’s only couch surfing for a week, until he convinces the ex-wife to let him back in the house. I can keep a secret for a week.”

Fuck. _Fuck_. They’re brothers and that has to mean something when he’s got no real parents but in this moment Lip hates him more than he’s ever hated Frank and Monica.

“You ever think dating guys who are into statutory rape is a bad idea?!” Oh fuck. Oh Jesus. What if that’s why it happened? What if he thought he was Ian? It still would have been rape, he didn’t ask, just started, but what if that’s why? Jesus. Lip wretches but all he’s consumed is enough cigarettes to make himself dizzy. There’s not even bile to expel.

“We had this conversation already,” Ian starts, exasperated. “I told you, if it’s love or-”

“Ian if you say one more word I’m going to slit my wrists with a box cutter.” He could. It’s sitting right there on the counter. He could, if he was a coward who didn’t care about ruining his family’s lives.

“That’s not funny. You weren’t there, but it was scary. Like the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m not joking. I can’t- You can’t- Just not one more fucking word, okay?”

“Lip are you alright?”

“Look, I need you to tell Mandy after your shift that I’m sleeping at her house.” Surrounded by yet another rapist, this one mainlining hard drugs, but at least this one only goes after girls. It’s a quick change of plans, one that makes his practicing normalcy unnecessary, but an important change. If Lip is already doubting his ability to fake fine around his family, it’ll only be a hundred times worse with _him_ there. 

“You hate Mr. Milkovich. You never go over when he’s home. And you don’t fucking like Mickey’s brothers either, and most of them are out of jail right now.”

“Oh, and tell Fiona I won’t be back for a bit, but it’s not a drop out rerun, I’m not pissed or anything. I just can’t be there right now.” In a week he can get Frank drunk on the condition that he does an inspection, makes sure he’s gone. Jimmy and thereby _he_ is rich, he won’t want to stay on the couch for long.

“Lip, what the fuck is going on.”

“Fuck off.”

“No. What the fuck,” he repeats, the obstinate fucker.

“It’s nothing, it’s just crowded.” He can tell by Ian’s scowl that he’s not buying it. This was easier last time, when he just had to breathe through it and get Mandy off and wait for his pubes to grow back. This was easier the time before that, when despite Debbie being mad he at least had Fiona and Ian backing him up that it was the right choice to not let Holly fuck him in his sleep. This was easier the time before that, when everyone was so screwed up and traumatized coming home from their various foster homes that no one noticed he was his own version of screwed up. This time, Ian’s too sharp.

“Bullshit. You’re leaving Mandy and the kid you just rescued to fuck off to Terry? Bullshit.”

“Fuck off, Ian.”

He’s got Ian riled up now. The perceived condemnation of his gay lifestyle, and the already blackening eye, yeah, Ian’s pissed. The shove that comes is unsurprising, though Lip still teeters from it. “Are you really that concerned that I’m going to blow him in front of Jimmy?”

That didn’t even occur to him, that Ian might keep on having sex with him. “If you put a hand on him I’m going to break all ten of your fucking fingers.”

“You never fucking cared this much about Kash!”

“Because Kash wasn’t an alcoholic rapist!” He bellows loud enough that the people on the street can probably hear him. Can probably hear the breathing too. He’s breathing so loud, so quick. He can hear waterfalls in his ears and his hands are going numb. Is this what dying feels like? Is it okay that it’s okay if it is? Hypocrisy of letting this time bother him the most aside, it’s just true that things would be easier if he wasn’t alive. 

“What does that mean?”

Lip wants to shake his head, wants to tell him they’re done talking. He can only gasp for breath. He’s not fucking goddamn Monica, he would never do that to them, but it’s okay to think about things, as long as he doesn’t do them. 

“Lip! What are you talking about?”

“He thought. I was. You.” He gets out from heaving lungs. He understands Mandy now. The doubt, the need to downplay it, the ‘is it really his fault if he didn’t know’, except he still wants to slice Lloyd’s face off with razor blades. Telling people is the worst. He’s never going to tell a single other person. 

“What? What are you-?” Ian trails off, horror blooming in his eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he says, suddenly too bone weary to hyperventilate. The oxygen increase must not have worked to refresh his cells, he feels deader than ever. He’s been up for thirty hours now, and in a state of constant anxiety for the last twelve. “It’s not my first time. There was the pedo teacher you thought was romantic, and you had a nicer foster home than me, the first time.” The memory of Mr Simmons was probably what made him freeze longer this time, actually, as compared to the two times with girls. Mr Simmons hurt resistors. “Smart enough to avoid Father Pete, but foster care wasn’t a choice.”

“Lip? Are you saying- Jesus Christ. He’s still in our _house_ , Lip!” 

“Yeah, I know. Hence me not going home.” 

“But why didn’t you tell Fiona to kick him out? Or scream?”

Did Ian ask Mandy this? Lip doesn’t remember Mandy getting this kind of interrogation. “You really want the details of why someone might not scream, little brother?”

Ian looks at him for a hard second, then marches without word to the door, where he flips the sign to closed. 

“Where are you going?” After school specials have informed Lip that Ian should be hugging him now, taking him to the cops who will take him to the hospital for even worse tests than Planned Parenthood dick swabs. Ian shouldn’t be deserting him.

“You’re not going to Mandy’s. I’m going. Iggy will give me a gun. I don’t even need to tip him off by coming into the house. I have aim at two hundred yards.”

This is what it is to be an elder Gallagher sibling: problem solving other people’s stupid shit when you’re up to your neck in your own. He’s just been messed with, he doesn’t need Ian being a shortsighted jackass. “And when the judge asks why the first degree homicide?”

“I’ll say it happened to me. You don’t have to get involved.”

“Oh yeah, totally believable based on your chitchat over pancakes.”

Ian is not letting go of his revenge so easily. “So I bide my time, wait until no one is around. There’s already one body in the yard.”

“Don’t.” Everyone’s always pressuring him to be the rich genius saviour of the family but Ian’s the one who knows what he wants to do with his life, even if it is to become a future amputee killing civilians. He can’t do that from jail. “If you want to do something, get him out of the house.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough.” He made it through the other times. He just needs to not smoke weed for a month or two. Only hard alcohol, nothing that lets his mind wander and his sense memory take over.

“I want to kill him.”

“Look, it’s just a fucked up thing on top of a life of fucked up things. Maybe I want to die, but since when have Gallaghers not felt that way?”

Ian snorts. “Blessed with bountiful lives, we are. Shit.” He rubs his nose like he always does when he’s trying not to cry. Lip’s seen the gesture a hundred times over the years. Pardon him, but he really hopes Ian can hold it in this time. Lip’s not quite ready for slinging his arms around someone for a hug. He can fake it if he has to, has faked harder in the past, like a sex drive with Mandy. But Ian knows him better, will be able to tell he’s crawling in his own skin doing so. Lip doesn’t want that taint on them.

Lip decides to ask. It’s been the only thing they’ve never talked about, big brother to little brother, and Lip’s never wanted cause to talk about it. If he finds out the answer is yes, he might really blow his brains out over being a shit caretaker. But when the fuck else can he ask? Once they leave the Kash and Grab Lip plans on never talking about it again. “Apart from the agree to disagree statutory rape, anything ever... Father Pete? Or foster care? A sketchy babysitter?”

“No. No.” Ian says quickly. “I mean Mandy that one time, until she ran away crying. Karen, kind of, though technically I said okay. But nothing real, nothing like- No. No Lip, I would have said something.”

Lip tugs his cuffs further down his hands, one hand then the other. “I’m not apologizing. It’s not like Frank or Monica would have paid for therapy.” 

Growing up with loveable scamp Father Pete in the neighbourhood taught him early that people don’t go to jail for doing bad things to kids. That first week he was back from Simmons, waking up every night with a piss soaked bed, furious that his body was acting like a baby again, even though he was big and could take care of little Ian just fine, no help from Fiona, taught him that no one notices signs. Hell, he didn’t even have to worry about hiding the sheets because everyone just assumed the wet pile under the laundry chute was Frank’s fault. The stats he googled at the library after Mrs Neidermeyer got hands on with him informed him that out of every thousand sexual assaults, nine hundred and ninety five perpetrators walk free. Lip is a bookie, on occasion. Odds of reporting helping his situation in any way are so low nobody’d take them.

“Me and Fiona would have talked to you.” 

Lip doesn’t point out that he did try to talk to Ian about the pedo teacher. He doesn’t want to fight. He feels bad about decking him, mostly. Resentful of Ian bringing him into their lives, but that has to be papered over with sadness because at least Lip knows it’s wrong. Ian got twisted up somewhere along the line and doesn’t see the manipulation of older men as a bad thing. Lip doesn’t know how to fix that.

“Don’t tell Fiona,” he says instead. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Lip knows it’s a lie the moment Ian says it. It might be Fiona, the most likely to comfort Ian. Best friend Mandy or boyfriend Mickey, for righteous anger and destructive emotional venting. Ve or Kevin for elderly wisdom without involving Fi, although it’ll trickle back to her. Maybe Ian will go way off the beaten path and it’ll somehow be Carl or Debbie. But it’ll be someone, because Lip can see in his face that he can’t keep this secret. Which kind of makes Lip want to punch him again. Ian can keep his own secrets no problem, his orientation and his paternity and his boyfriend, but the second it’s someone else he’s a talker? It’s infuriating above all else, even as the part of Lip that caretakes his family understands that Ian’s allowed to be traumatized too.

What happens next depends on who it leaks to. Fiona will blow up her relationship with Jimmy, and try to get him to go to the cops. Both Milkoviches will probably murder Lloyd. Mandy already almost murdered Blake Collins, and Mickey would perpetrate any crime Ian wanted. Ve’s resourceful, she might find some low cost therapy he could attend, as if telling anyone else his sob story is something he’d be delighted to do. Any way you cut the deck, it’s out of Lip’s hands now. The feeling is sickly familiar after seventeen years of only ever being able to react, after so many fucking years of nothing ever staying stable for more than a minute and a half. He can’t even commit to watching a serial drama on cable tv, because you never know when you need to fake someone’s death or get in a fight or search the ditches for a passed out parent.

“Is there anything I can _do_? Like, not with him. For you,” Ian says.

Under the burst of anger though, is something tinged a lot like relief. Ian knows, now, and everything hasn’t fallen apart. Lip isn’t less of a man in his eyes, for letting the men do it to him, and for not liking the women who tried. Ian isn’t hustling him to do any of a dozen things he doesn’t want to do. Ian will stop at nothing to get LLoyd far away from him, and Lip trusts his situational awareness far more than Frank’s, if Frank even bothered to do the task alcohol paid him to do. And if Lip does go home soon, Ian will be an outlet. The single place he won’t have to pretend everything is fine.

“Just, fuckin’... keep being you,” Lip answers. Before it gets too saccharine, he adds, “and toss me a pack of smokes. I used up two packs today.”

“Forty cigarettes? You’re going to kill your lungs,” Ian says, all the while hopping onto the counter so he can lean back and get a pack from the overhead containers.

“Says the pot smoker,” Lip points out.

“You smoke pot too! You run the ice cream truck!”

“Yeah, but we’re not arguing that my lungs are healthy, we’re arguing about if yours are just as bad.”

Ian rips the cellophane off of the packet and tosses them over. Lip flips the lid and tucks one in the crease of his lips as he mentally prepares his next bullet point in the weed lungs vs tobacco lungs argument. This is what he needed; the first moment where things seem like they used to be, before it happened. It gets easier to compartmentalize it and move on after that first spark of genuine normalcy. It’s earlier in the timeline than Lip would have expected. Maybe disclosing to the lone person in the world who completely gets him wasn’t the worst thing he could have done. Only time will tell.

**Author's Note:**

> I may edit this note as I continue to watch the show and collect instances. But if we're counting only Lip, and not counting any of the questionable consent that comes from sex while pass out drunk:  
> -Everyone knows Father Pete's a pedo, and Lip implies he knows how to use that factor for scheming  
> -MILF Mrs Neidermeyer comes on to a underage Lip while wearing lingerie  
> -Holly climbs onto him while he's sleeping and tries to have sex with him as he's pushing her away from him  
> -Convicted child rapist Blake Collins  
> -Ned/Lloyd climbs into his bed naked and erect and grabs him  
> -After hitting Karen with the car, Mandy pushes Lip down in the kitchen and rides him while he's shouting no and stop  
> -Amanda gives him a blowjob while he's sleeping, in front of his 12 and 3 year old brothers. (this is the THIRD TIME someone attacks him while he's sleeping. how can he not have a knife under his pillow at this point, christ [not in a victim blaming way, just considering hypervigilance])


End file.
